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Imagine this: a smiling Rasmus Højlund wearing Napoli's colors. Now, juxtapose that with a dejected the Slovenian forward in a Manchester United kit, appearing like he just missed an open goal. Don't bother locating an actual photo of that miss; context is your adversary. Now, include statistics in a large, silly font. Remember some emoticons. Post it everywhere.

Would you mention that Højlund's goal count includes scores in the Champions League while his counterpart isn't playing in continental tournaments? Of course not. And will you highlight that four of Højlund's goals were scored versus weaker national sides, or that Denmark is much stronger to Sesko's Slovenia and generates far more scoring opportunities. If you manage social media for a major brand, raw engagement is your livelihood, United are the prime target, and nuance is the thing to avoid.

So the wheel of online material spins. Your next task is to sift through a 44-minute interview with Peter Schmeichel and extract the part where he calls the signing of Sesko "strange". There's a bit, where Schmeichel prefaces his remarks by saying, "I have nothing bad to say about Benjamin Sesko"... well, cut that. No one needs that. Simply ensure "weird" and "the player" are paired in the title. The audience will be furious.

The Season of Potential and Hasty Opinions

Mid-autumn has long been one of my preferred periods to watch football. The leaves swirl, the wind turns, the teams and tactics are newly formed, everything is new and yet patterns are emerging. Key players of the season ahead are planting their flags. The transfer window is shut. No one is talking about the quadruple yet. All teams are still in the game. At this precise point, all is possibility.

However, for many of the same reasons, mid-autumn has also been one of my most disliked times to read about football. Because although nothing has yet been settled, something must always be getting settled. Jack Grealish is resurgent. Florian Wirtz has been a crushing disappointment. Is Antoine Semenyo the best player in the league right now? We need a decision immediately.

Sesko as The Prime Example

In many ways, Benjamin Sesko feels like the archetype in this respect, a player caught between football's opposing, non-negotiable forces. The imperative to withhold final conclusions, to let technical development and strategic understanding to develop. And the demand to produce permanent verdicts, a conveyor belt of takes and memes, context-free condemnations and pointless comparisons, a square that can not truly be solved.

I do not propose to offer a in-depth evaluation of Sesko's time at United to date. He has been in the lineup on four occasions in the top flight in a wildly inconsistent team, scored two goals, and taken a grand total of 116 contacts with the ball. What precisely are we evaluating? And do I propose to replicate the pundits' notable debate "Argument Over Benjamin Sesko", in which two of England's leading pundits argue thrillingly on a podcast over whether Sesko needs ten strikes to be deemed successful this season (one pundit), or whether it's really more like 12 or 13 (the other).

A Harsh Reality

For all this I loved watching him at Leipzig: a powerful, fast racing car of a forward, playing in a team ideally suited to his abilities: afforded the license to attack but also the leeway to miss. And in part this is why United feels like the cruellest place he could possibly be at the moment: a place where "harsh judgments" are handed down in about the time it takes to load a pre-roll ad, the club with the widest and most ruthless gulf between the time and air he requires, and the opportunity he is likely to receive.

We saw a case of this during the international break, when a widely shared chart conveniently stated that Sesko had been judged – decisively – the worst signing of the summer transfer window by a survey of football representatives. And of course, the press are by no means the only ones in this. Club channels, influencers, unidentified profiles with a suspiciously high number of pornbot followers: all parties with a vested interest is now basically aligned along the identical rules, an ecosystem explicitly nosed towards controversy.

The Psychological Toll

Endless scrolling and tapping. What are we doing to ourselves? Do we realize, on any level, what this endless sluice of aggravation is doing to our brains? Quite apart from the inherent strangeness of being a player in the middle of this, knowing on a bizarre butterfly-effect level that every single thing about them is now essentially material, product, open-source property to be packaged and exchanged.

And yes, in part this is because it's Manchester United, the entity that continues to feed the cycle, a big club that must constantly be producing the big feelings. But also, partly this is a temporary malaise, a swing of opinion most clearly and harshly observed at this time of year, roughly four weeks after the transfer market shut. Throughout the summer we have been desiring players, eulogising them, salivating over them. Now, only a handful of games later, many of those very players are already being disdained as broken goods. Is it time to worry about a new signing? Did Arsenal actually need their striker wise? What was the point of another expensive buy?

A Wider Issue

It feels appropriate that he faces their rivals on the weekend: a team at once 13 months unbeaten at their stadium in the Premier League and somehow in their own situation of feverish crisis, like submitting a missing person’s report on someone who went to the shops half an hour ago. Defensively suspect. Their star finished. The striker waste of money. Arne Slot bald.

Perhaps we have not yet quite grasped the way the narrative of football has begun to supplant football itself, to influence the way we view it, an entire sport reoriented around talking points and immediate responses, an activity that occurs in the backdrop while we browse through our phones, unable to detach from the saline drip of takes and further hot takes. It may be Sesko bearing the brunt right now. But in a way, everyone is sacrificing something here.